MIAMI — US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner arrived at the Miami talks carrying a winter preparedness plan so exhaustive that it assigns a specific blanket to each Ukrainian household and requires NATO ambassadors to complete a 6 a.m. snow-shoveling drill before any security guarantee is discussed.
«We are not leaving this room until every substation in Ukraine has been wrapped in American-made insulation and every grain export route has been personally walked by a European Commission official,» Witkoff said, describing the exchange as constructive. «The first frost is a deadline, not a suggestion.»
The plan, which Witkoff called «the most literal reading of winter preparedness ever attempted,» requires Britain, France and Germany to each donate one power plant, while Ukraine's delegation — led by Kirill Budanov and Rustem Umerov — must submit to a nightly 9 p.m. roll call confirming that all generators are humming in harmony.
NATO's representative, Geoffrey van Leeuwen, was seen measuring the Miami conference room for a wood stove, explaining that «if the talks run past October, we will heat this building ourselves.»
Zelensky's office responded by announcing that Ukraine will now hold its own winter preparedness talks every morning at dawn, in the snow, until Moscow agrees to a partial ceasefire covering energy infrastructure. «We will out-prepare them,» a senior lawmaker said. «We have already ordered the shovels.»
The talks continue Saturday, with Kushner reportedly preparing to travel to Moscow carrying a thermos and a handwritten list of every radiator in Ukraine.